


I'll Be Your Home

by Rucksack (wingblade)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Death, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5165738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingblade/pseuds/Rucksack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terra discovers a boy living on the streets. His past has come back to haunt him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. profugo

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fairly old story from 2013 (a lot of the stories I’ve been revising are from around the same time). It’s probably a little different than what I usually write. It focuses quite a bit more on friendship.
> 
> I read “The Wish House” by Celia Rees when I was twelve or thirteen, and I loved it and always wanted to write something inspired by it. This is what inspired the beach theme, in addition to the past and present point-of-view changes.
> 
> I've added a minimum chapter count I'd like to work towards, as per usual. (Fun fact: this story was tentatively called “Homeless” until a few months ago. The rename is inspired by Rin Oikawa’s “I’ll Be Your Home,” which is the ending theme of the Devil May Cry anime.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terra finds a boy. _Terra remembers the boy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of April 23rd, 2018, I am revising and working on completing this story!

Midway through the winter season, long after the first hard frost, a tall, dark-haired man comes across a small, blond boy. The boy is still, as if asleep, but his eyes are wide open — he is there, and not there. Upon closer inspection, his lips appear to be chapped and peeling. The man waves his hand and calls out to the boy.

Is he dead? No, there is a pulse; quiet, but it’s there, thrumming gently within his wrist. Surrounding him is what seems to be the boy’s home: ratty blankets and a small pile of gnawed-on popsicle sticks. A flattened cardboard box shields his face from the worst bite of the wind.

There is no real option in leaving him here. If the man somehow returned to this very spot one day and the boy were not here, it would haunt him. It would torment him if he later found the boy still living here as well, begging for change or warming himself over a fire with torn, fingerless gloves.

The man’s demons have nearly caused his undoing, and yet here they’ve led him. He hoists the boy into his arms — freezing, but devoid of trembling — and bounds off into the dwindling hours of twilight.

* * *

_A voice calls out to him:_

“Terra.”

_It’s soft and affirming at first, then questioning._

“Terra?”

_Finally, it is screaming — shrill and terrified in its intonation._

“Terra!”

_When he opens his eyes, he is at the beach. The sand is squishy and hot beneath his toes, while the sky overhead is dull and muggy. A faint glimmer of sun still peeks out from the clouds._

_There is no one else on the beach except for a boy, far, far down the shoreline. He is watching the sky. Terra moves toward him, but the boy moves even farther out, as if Terra had never moved at all. Terra starts to run, then trips, choking on sand. It’s grainy and sharp; it’s in his eyes and it scratches at his skin. The more he struggles, the deeper he sinks. He falls and falls until there is nothing left but darkness, and now he knows he’ll never see those blue eyes again._


	2. algus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aqua cares for Terra. _Terra sees the boy for the first time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's at least _one_ update for January! Wooo~

Later, Aqua tells Terra the story of that first day. She embellishes it with exaggerated acts of heroism, and leaves out the parts the media tried to eat him alive over. In reality, when Terra first arrived at the hospital Aqua was interning at, he screamed. He screamed at everyone, anyone, to save _him_. Terra remembers this, but after hearing Aqua’s fictitious version so many times, he’s started to believe it’s a dream.

 _His breath is so slow. God, he’s so cold. He’s_ —

A nurse had asked if he knew the boy’s name after his arms had finally been relinquished of their charge. He felt light and weightless, like none of it was real and he would fly away if he released his grip on reality, no longer anchored to this world with responsibility. Terra told them the boy’s name.

Aqua leaves out this part, too. Terra had been wrong; oh-so very wrong. His reality was a lie. The newspapers later dubiously bestowed him with the title of “Twilight Town’s Madman… or Savior?” The name he gave the hospital had been that of someone who had been buried long ago. Because of it, people began to suspect Terra had been behind the boy’s condition.

Until the boy woke up.

* * *

_Terra finds the beach convenient. It’s within walking distance of his house, and there’s even a strip of it no one seems to use. Except for the last time he visited — a small, lanky boy had climbed over the high, jagged rocks that separated the secluded area Terra had found from the rest of the beach._

_Terra wanted to yell at him to be careful, or tell him to stop what he was attempting entirely, and he nearly did, but by then, the boy had already hopped safely to the ground. He looked around curiously, inspecting the new territory._

_He wore blue swimming trunks, but Terra never saw him swim. Mainly he just dug through the sand, looking for seashells._


	3. nominis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aqua continues caring for Terra. _Terra sees the boy again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have other fics that are higher on my priority list than this one, but the chapters are short, so I thought I'd use it to help me get back into the habit of posting. Have I officially returned yet? We just don't know.

Aqua wipes Terra’s forehead with a cool cloth, humming quietly. His head is resting on her lap as she scratches at a crossword puzzle pressed close to her chest. The tap of her pencil against the paper matches the irregularity of Terra’s breath. She’s timing it carefully, ready to sprint into action the moment his breathing stops, but it never does.

To her, this is worse: rather than being able to help him now — stealing him back from the jaws of death — she has to watch as his body slowly shuts itself down. She watches over him; she always has. Even when Terra nearly assaulted a nurse when she approached him about allegedly lying about the identity of the boy he had saved, Aqua defended him. She pulled him away and dragged him down the hall, wanting to reprimand him or slap him — anything to make him open his eyes, not close them further to the truth. All she could do was wipe her eyes and crush his hope.

_His name. It’s Roxas._

_It’s not —_

_Terra, his name is Roxas._

Now, Terra mostly sleeps. Aqua wishes she could say that he's visited by happy dreams, but from the sweat, whimpers, and trembling that engulf her best friend’s body, she knows otherwise. He moans and cries out, thrashing in his sleep. He eats and showers, but the only times he’s truly coherent are when they visit Roxas.

* * *

_The boy is standing there again, looking up at the sky. In one hand, he holds a stick — the tool he uses to dig up seashells, always encrusted with sand — and Terra wonders if it’s the same stick he uses everyday. He always finds an enormous amount of shells; Terra doesn’t know how he accomplishes such a feat._

_By the time the boy leaves — heading back home, presumably, or onto his next destination to watch the stars twinkle against the sky — his shorts are heavy with the bounty he’s collected in his pockets. When he wades out of the water, he hikes up his shorts and scampers off._

_Terra hasn’t laughed — not yet — but he smiles every time._


End file.
